Concept: For my creature I wanted to combine one of my favorite animals with something that would believably aid in it's speed. After some brainstorming I made the conclusion that something that would create less drag would be the solution. One of the things some insects have are smooth exoskeletons, so I simply applied some aspects from those to create the final design. The smoothness of the wings and the head reduce drag, the back legs add extra grip, and the tail and arm fins aid in stabilization at high speeds.
Techniques: For my creature I used Blender to create the model. I started with various cubes and added some subdivision modifiers to smooth them out. Once I got the general positions I combined the objects together using boolean union and started sculpting them into shape. After I got the rough shape I wanted I then started to retopologize the model since such a high poly model could cause problems along the line. I sliced the model in half to make it easier to work on and would apply a mirror modifier later on to fix it. Next I used a shrinkwrap modifier and a plane to start the retopology. I went all around the model using various extrudes from the plane's vertex's and filling any holes with grid fill. After all that I went around the model fixing various issues and finally added one last subdivision modifier to smooth out the model.
Materials: I used an orange color to relate back to it's original animal, the cheetah. If I were to display this piece I would want to place it somewhere with natural lighting since the outdoors is where a cheetah would naturally be comfortable. The post processing involved using loctate super glue and tape to attach the pieces to one another. We debated various colors but in the end we choose to keep the color white and clean it up with paint on the edges to give it a more uniform look.
Final Project Brief
Design
We all looked at each others designs and came to the conclusion that we should use my design. There were a couple deciding factors that made it the most viable choice. Such as JieXing's design loosing too much detail in the reduction process. While it looked good in it's non-edited state once it was reduced to less polygons certain details would be lost, such as losing the horn it had, or the wings becoming a mess. And Jackie's model was still in the rough stages, needing more time to be done thus we weren't able to fully decide on Jackie's design. My design was the only one that read well when we reduced the polygons so that's why we went with it. Once we all agreed on the design we all took our own stab at making a layout it for pepakura and choose the best one. The design never had it's final name decided, we all simply referred to it as Chimera since we couldn't think of one at the time. If I were to give one though I would probably call it "Swift Tail".
Responsibilities
We split up the responsibilities into 2 parts, one would focus on getting the parts cut, and the others would assemble and add any post processing to the piece. I was in charge of getting the pieces cut since I was the only one able to go to the lab and get a membership at the time. It was very stressful time since the lab usually had someone at the cutter. And since not many had any experience with the machine it took way longer since everyone had to get their layout's adjusted. I took the materials and eventually got them cut over a couple of days. Once I finished cutting the materials we split the payment for the service 3-ways.
Process
After finishing and handing off the pieces, JieXing and Jackie were tasked on constructing the model. The model itself had some issues being put together, as told by my teammates, the cardboard was not easy to work with. The pieces were so fragile at times yet quite tough, such as when folding certain pieces. Some pieces, even when we could see where they went in the files, confused us on how exactly they fit into place. Once it was finally done the we checked the model to make sure all the edges were together and added some paint to them so that the inside color wouldn't show.
Some of the pro's in the way we decided the roles was that we were given time to do things in-between, such as work on other classes. The downside was that one could not progress unless the other had finished their part. And if something were to go wrong one would have to go fix it and report to the others when the fixed part was ready. That left the other's with little to do at times.
No comments:
Post a Comment